Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome to a special set of episodes of the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab. The now global spread of coronavirus is affecting
Speaker 1: all of us. This disease has brought a host of medical, economic,
Speaker 1: and political problems, but it's also given us a ton
Speaker 1: of uncertainty and anxiety, which are beginning to have an
Speaker 1: enormous negative impact on our collective While being but whenever
Speaker 1: I'm confused or fearful, I remember that looking for answers
Speaker 1: in evidence based science is always the best way to go,
Speaker 1: and that's where I'm hoping this podcast can help. If
Speaker 1: you're like me, you probably feel like your entire life
Speaker 1: has been or is about to be, upended by this
Speaker 1: awful crisis, which leads to lots and lots of negative
Speaker 1: emotions and stressful personal situations. Last week, for example, I
Speaker 1: wind up working twenty four seven to get all the
Speaker 1: students in my residential college here at back home safely.
Speaker 1: All that stress and rushed goodbyes made me feel incredibly
Speaker 1: sad and anxious. But after paying so much attention to
Speaker 1: my students, I realized that I had not given my
Speaker 1: own situation much thought. So I decided to head to
Speaker 1: the grocery store, which was a major error. All the
Speaker 1: toilet papers gone, a lot of the frozen foods, a
Speaker 1: lot of the vegetables, cleaning supplies, meats and darier hard
Speaker 1: to come. Every single supermarket was just completely wiped out.
Speaker 1: There was no produce left. People were wearing gloves and
Speaker 1: masks frantically grabbing random stuff, and so I too, just
Speaker 1: started rushing round. When I got back home, I realized
Speaker 1: I bought a bunch of foods that didn't make any
Speaker 1: sense whatsoever. I bought cans of stuff that I already
Speaker 1: had in my pantry and a bar of soap I
Speaker 1: totally didn't need. Plus I forgot essentials like coffee, which
Speaker 1: I had planned to pick up but had completely forgotten
Speaker 1: in the mayhem. My futile, panicky shopping experience made me
Speaker 1: realize something important. In this current crisis, None of us
Speaker 1: seem able to make reasonable decisions because we're all too
Speaker 1: anxious and overwhelmed, which is kind of a problem because
Speaker 1: right now we all need our wits about us to
Speaker 1: make effective plans. We need to make sure that our
Speaker 1: kids get to eat healthy, that our elderly family members
Speaker 1: are taken care of. But it's hard to plan for
Speaker 1: this virus effectively, when everything feels so overwhelming and emotional,
Speaker 1: I wanted to call someone who could help me find
Speaker 1: strategies to regulate all this anxiety so that I can
Speaker 1: make better decisions. And I knew just the scientist to call.
Speaker 1: My name's Ethan Cross. I'm a professor in the psychology
Speaker 1: department at the University of Michigan, and I direct a
Speaker 1: laboratory that specializes in the study of self control and emotion. So, Ethan,
Speaker 1: everybody needs somebody who's an expert on self control and
Speaker 1: emotion right now, because this is an incredibly emotional time,
Speaker 1: like everyone's freaking out. Yeah. So I've never lived through
Speaker 1: a time like this before, and it certainly makes me
Speaker 1: think like psychology has a lot to potentially contribute to
Speaker 1: what really the world is going through right now. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of your work focuses on how emotion
Speaker 1: affects planning and what's called self regulation. So talk about
Speaker 1: the effect this sort of heightened emotion is having on
Speaker 1: how people are just acting in their daily lives right now.
Speaker 1: So intense emotions like anxiety can have a powerful effect
Speaker 1: on how we think, feel, and behave. One thing it does,
Speaker 1: is it it zooms us in on the source of threat.
Speaker 1: So when we experience an intense emotion like anxiety, we
Speaker 1: are precision focused on what is potentially bothering us. And
Speaker 1: when we overfocus in that way on things that can
Speaker 1: have some important consequences for our ability to make decisions
Speaker 1: and perform in the context that are important to us. So,
Speaker 1: as an example, if you're in the supermarket and you're
Speaker 1: looking for, you know, supplies to last you the next
Speaker 1: thirty days, if you're overfocused on the anxiety, you may
Speaker 1: have the experience of, you know, putting your hand down
Speaker 1: and running down the aisles and just putting everything in
Speaker 1: your food cart. Right, You're not thinking about the bigger picture,
Speaker 1: the broader contexts. Hey, what do I have in the
Speaker 1: pantry that I need to supplement? Right? What things are
Speaker 1: perishable and what's not. And so that's just one example
Speaker 1: of how anxiety can zoom us in on problems. The
Speaker 1: other consequence of that is if we're overfocused on a
Speaker 1: particular threat. So let's say, what am I going to
Speaker 1: do for the next thirty days or sixty days when
Speaker 1: I've got to stay at home with my family and
Speaker 1: work and help my kids continue to learn If you're
Speaker 1: constantly thinking about that particular issue, that doesn't leave a
Speaker 1: whole lot of mental space to think about other things,
Speaker 1: the papers you have to do, the projects you're working on,
Speaker 1: and so forth and so on, and so we know
Speaker 1: that human attention is a limited resource. We have this
Speaker 1: unbelievable ability to think in creative, abstract ways about the world,
Speaker 1: but we're using all of that capacity to zoom in
Speaker 1: on this threat, and as a result, you don't get
Speaker 1: a whole lot of work done. So that's how intense
Speaker 1: anxiety can essentially knock out our ability to think well.
Speaker 1: It can also have negative implications for our relationships. That's
Speaker 1: a second big nex consequence. One of the things we
Speaker 1: know about intense emotion is it acts like jet fuel
Speaker 1: that propels us to share our experiences with others. There's
Speaker 1: decades of research which shows that when people experience, across
Speaker 1: different cultures, intense emotions, they are highly motivated to talk
Speaker 1: with other people about what they're experiencing. But oftentimes what
Speaker 1: happens with intense anxiety is we talk to other people
Speaker 1: and we continue to talk and talk and talk and talk,
Speaker 1: and that has the effect of pushing other people away
Speaker 1: of counter productively and paradoxically actually creating a sense of
Speaker 1: social isolation and loneliness rather than bringing us the social
Speaker 1: support we need. And so that's the second negative consequence
Speaker 1: we have to be aware of. The third is what
Speaker 1: intense anxiety, if chronically activated, can due to our bodies,
Speaker 1: our physical health. And the situation doesn't get any rosier
Speaker 1: when we look at that dimension. And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is intense feelings of emotions activate a biological fight
Speaker 1: or flight immune response that can be amazingly helpful for
Speaker 1: dealing with potential threats. It's like activating the army reserves
Speaker 1: or the National Guard to deal with an impending attack. Well,
Speaker 1: turns out that biological system works really well in the
Speaker 1: short term, but when it's chronically activated over time, as
Speaker 1: is the case with chronic rumination and worry and anxiety,
Speaker 1: that's when the biological systems begin to break down, so
Speaker 1: they begin to perform less well. And as a result,
Speaker 1: we know that intense anxieties linked to a host of
Speaker 1: negative physical maladies. This is all pretty darn negative, right,
Speaker 1: and the good news is that it need not be
Speaker 1: that way, and that's what you're an expert on this
Speaker 1: phenomena of emotion regulation. So talk to our listeners, what
Speaker 1: is emotion regulation kind of how does it work? So,
Speaker 1: emotion regulation is the ability to align how you're feeling
Speaker 1: with how you want to feel. Oftentimes it takes the
Speaker 1: form of being able to reduce a negative response, a
Speaker 1: negative feeling like an anxious state or sadness. If we're regulating,
Speaker 1: we want to bring those down a little bit. But
Speaker 1: it can also take the form of amplifying those states, right,
Speaker 1: so you could push up your anger sometimes if you
Speaker 1: want to. Sometimes that can be helpful in a particular
Speaker 1: interpersonal context. And the same thing applies to positive emotions too,
Speaker 1: So it's really this facility that people have with pushing
Speaker 1: their emotions up and down. I do think it's important
Speaker 1: to just clarify from the outset that when we talk
Speaker 1: about emotion regulation, we're not talking about turning emotions off
Speaker 1: and not feeling anything. We're often talking about raining them
Speaker 1: in to a point that we think is most adaptive
Speaker 1: for us given the situations that we're in and in
Speaker 1: the current climate when dealing with coronavirus, I don't think
Speaker 1: we want to actually shut off anxiety altogether. That feeling
Speaker 1: of anxiety is what is leading people to stay in
Speaker 1: their home as they should stay in their home to
Speaker 1: flatten the curve and get this under control. So we
Speaker 1: want to maintain some anxious feelings, but what we don't
Speaker 1: want to do is let those anxious feelings explode. So
Speaker 1: your work has focused on certain things we can do
Speaker 1: to emotionally regulate. And one of the strategies I love
Speaker 1: that comes from your lab is this idea of psychological distance.
Speaker 1: So we're all talking about social distancing now, but that's
Speaker 1: not what psychological distance means. Walk me through what psychological
Speaker 1: distance is and kind of how we achieve it in
Speaker 1: our normal lives. The example I like to give people
Speaker 1: to really convey what psychological distance is all about is
Speaker 1: to ask you to think about a situation or a
Speaker 1: time in your life when a friend or loved one
Speaker 1: has come to you with a problem that they are
Speaker 1: spinning over. They're ruminating, they're worrying excessively, they don't know
Speaker 1: what to do, and when they pose a problem to you,
Speaker 1: it's relatively easy for you to coach them through that situation.
Speaker 1: The reason for that is that you have psychological distance
Speaker 1: from that problem. It's not happening to you. It's happening
Speaker 1: to your friend. Then you're, as a result, realt more
Speaker 1: capable of weighing in on that problem more objectively, more rationally.
Speaker 1: What we've learned is that we have evolved tools to
Speaker 1: gain psychological distance from our own problems, and that when
Speaker 1: we adopt more distanced stances when we think about our
Speaker 1: own life, that can offer us think about our experiences
Speaker 1: more objectively, just like we are capable of thinking about
Speaker 1: other people's situations more objectively, and there are lots of
Speaker 1: different tools that exist to help us do that. We
Speaker 1: naturally get this idea of seeking advice from someone with
Speaker 1: a bit of psychological distance. When times are tough, we
Speaker 1: know we need a friend or coach to help us.
Speaker 1: But the problem with the current crisis is that no
Speaker 1: one has psychological distance. We're all in the same boat,
Speaker 1: which means everyone we know is freaking out and anxious.
Speaker 1: It feels like we're all under threat. So what can
Speaker 1: we do to gain a little psychological distance when all
Speaker 1: our friends are just as stressed as we are. When
Speaker 1: we get back from the break ethan, we'll share some
Speaker 1: psychological tips for harnessing your inner BF, your own wise
Speaker 1: internal psychological coach who can calm you down and get
Speaker 1: you thinking a little bit more rationally again. Scientists find
Speaker 1: inspiration in lots of ways. Isaac Newton began thinking about
Speaker 1: gravity after seeing an apple fall from a tree. Alexander
Speaker 1: Fleming discovered penicillin after someone accidentally left a petri dish uncovered.
Speaker 1: For psychologist Ethan Cross, inspiration about finding the importance of
Speaker 1: an inner coach came from what might at first seem
Speaker 1: like an odd source, basketball player Lebron James. It was
Speaker 1: this interesting moment in time where Lebron James for the
Speaker 1: first time was about to become a free agent, and
Speaker 1: he had his choice of where he wanted to play basketball,
Speaker 1: and several teams, including my beloved Nicks, were vying for
Speaker 1: his attention, and he ended up doing an ESPN primetime
Speaker 1: special to declare his decision. But I didn't realize when
Speaker 1: I was about to watch the show that he was
Speaker 1: going to provide this insight into his thinking process, which
Speaker 1: he did. At one moment in the interview, he said,
Speaker 1: one thing that I didn't want to do is make
Speaker 1: an emotional decision, and I wanted to do what was
Speaker 1: best for Lebron James, and what Lebron James is going
Speaker 1: to do to make him happy. He basically utters an
Speaker 1: emotion regulatory goal. Right, He says, you know, the one
Speaker 1: thing I first person didn't want to do is make
Speaker 1: an emotional decision. And the moment he committed to that goal,
Speaker 1: he switched. He did something very seemingly odd. He started
Speaker 1: talking about himself using his own name. Lebron James has
Speaker 1: got to do what is best for Lebron James. And
Speaker 1: so this scot my collaborators and I to start thinking
Speaker 1: about why would a person do such a thing? Right, Like,
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of the time we use names to
Speaker 1: think about refer to others. And so what we started
Speaker 1: doing and thinking about and importantly running la lots of
Speaker 1: experiments on, was the idea that language can provide people
Speaker 1: with a tool to gain distance from their own problems.
Speaker 1: The idea is that when we use words like names
Speaker 1: or words like you or he or she, we almost
Speaker 1: exclusively use those parts of speech when we think about
Speaker 1: and refer to other people. And so the idea is
Speaker 1: that when we use those parts of speech to refer
Speaker 1: to ourselves, that should lead us to think about ourselves
Speaker 1: more similar to how we think about others and it
Speaker 1: should provide us with the distance that comes with thinking
Speaker 1: about other people as a result, And Lebron was using
Speaker 1: this in a time when that was incredibly anxious for him,
Speaker 1: right like when he might have had that same narrowing
Speaker 1: we were just talking about a second ago, where you know,
Speaker 1: there's this kind of threat of is he going to
Speaker 1: make the right decision. He's kind of too narrow and
Speaker 1: he can't make the right choice. But in some sense,
Speaker 1: he's like harnessing an external coach, like he's kind of
Speaker 1: talking to himself as though he was someone else. And
Speaker 1: so you've done studies that have looked at this empirically,
Speaker 1: trying to get people to do exactly what Lebron did
Speaker 1: in times of stress. Yeah, so we brought participants into
Speaker 1: the laboratory and we induce stress using one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful techniques that we can humanely use. People are
Speaker 1: going to think shocks, but it's not extray shocks, right,
Speaker 1: I would argue that it's worse than shocks. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: like public speaking. Yeah, public speaking, which I think is
Speaker 1: worse for many people than physical harm. And when they
Speaker 1: got into the lab, we told them today, we want
Speaker 1: you to give us a speech on why you're ideally
Speaker 1: qualified to land your dream job. This is a total
Speaker 1: surprise for participants, and we tell them you can't take
Speaker 1: any notes, and so this is a very reliable way
Speaker 1: of inducing social threat anxiety. So after we get everyone
Speaker 1: stressed out, we basically randomly assign people by the flip
Speaker 1: of a coin, to one of two groups. In one condition,
Speaker 1: we say, you know, one of the things we're interested
Speaker 1: in the study are the different ways that people preparing
Speaker 1: themselves psychologically before having to give public speeches. Some people
Speaker 1: report trying to work through and make sense of what
Speaker 1: they're feeling in the first person, So that's what we'd
Speaker 1: like you to do, ask yourself, why am I feeling
Speaker 1: this way? In the other condition, we give people the
Speaker 1: exact same set of instructions, with one difference. We say,
Speaker 1: some people report trying to work through their feelings using
Speaker 1: their own name and other non first person pronounced, So
Speaker 1: that's what we'd like you to do. Why is Ethan
Speaker 1: feeling this way? And so in one condition, that's why
Speaker 1: am I? And the other condition it's why is Ethan?
Speaker 1: That's the only difference between the two, and they introspect
Speaker 1: using these different parts of speech for about three minutes.
Speaker 1: When that phase of the study is done, we take
Speaker 1: them down the hall to another room. There's an X
Speaker 1: on the floor in masking tape. We say stand right there.
Speaker 1: They look up heated. Right in front of them are
Speaker 1: three actors who are they're told are evaluators, and we
Speaker 1: train these actors to maintain stoic, disapproving facial expressions, so
Speaker 1: not positive when you look up at them. And right
Speaker 1: behind them there's a giant video camera with like a
Speaker 1: blinking red light that's recording what happens. And then we
Speaker 1: have the participants give their speech. They do the presentation
Speaker 1: when the study's done. One of the things we do
Speaker 1: is we have judges who don't know what condition the
Speaker 1: participants were assigned, to rate participants performances for how persuasive
Speaker 1: were their speeches. And what we find is that participants
Speaker 1: who use their own name are rated as having delivered
Speaker 1: more persuasive speeches. What that means to me is that
Speaker 1: all of the things being equal about participants in the
Speaker 1: two groups, it's the participants who use their own name
Speaker 1: that are more likely to get this job they're interviewing
Speaker 1: for now. We also did a few other things in
Speaker 1: this study, so we ask people how much shame and
Speaker 1: embarrassment they felt right after they gave their speech. Participants
Speaker 1: who use their name felt less shameful, They felt less
Speaker 1: self conscious and embarrassed. And then what we also did
Speaker 1: is we had people sit down in another room. You
Speaker 1: can think of this as like a stewing period, and
Speaker 1: I'm imagining, like, if I'm a subject in this study,
Speaker 1: I'm going to sit there and think I did a
Speaker 1: real crabby job. I suck Like you're just going to
Speaker 1: be I'm sure your subjects are just ruminating about how
Speaker 1: terrible they did. Well, that's exactly what we wanted to
Speaker 1: look at, and so we had people self report how
Speaker 1: much time they spent ruminating about what they did. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I can't believe I said that. I kept
Speaker 1: thinking about what I could have said better. And then
Speaker 1: we also had them describe in writing the stream of
Speaker 1: thoughts that were flowing through their head. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: participants who had used their own name showed that they
Speaker 1: were ruminating less about their performance than participants in the
Speaker 1: other group, which is kind of crazy when you think
Speaker 1: about it, because it's really just changing one word in
Speaker 1: the way you're talking to yourself and it has these
Speaker 1: incredible consequences. It's pretty crazy, Yeah, it is, and I
Speaker 1: would encourage listeners to just try doing this linguist a shift. Also,
Speaker 1: by the way, do it silently, not out loud. All
Speaker 1: of the science that we've done on this deals with
Speaker 1: these silent shifts in how people use language to think
Speaker 1: about themselves. We have not done it talking out loud
Speaker 1: to yourself. That actually may well be useful, but it
Speaker 1: importantly also violates lots of social norms that exist about
Speaker 1: not talking to yourself out loud, So I would not
Speaker 1: encourage that. You've also been showing that this isn't just
Speaker 1: a strategy that adults can use. This might be the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that parents can employ when talking to
Speaker 1: their kids in this really stressful time to get them
Speaker 1: to help regulate their own emotions. One of the most
Speaker 1: powerful manifestations of it is something called the Batman effect,
Speaker 1: which a set of development of psychologist Sephanie Carlson and
Speaker 1: Rachel White have really pioneered. What they show is that
Speaker 1: if you have a kid engaging in a really stressful
Speaker 1: task that they don't want to do and they're tempted
Speaker 1: to do other things, if you ask them to just
Speaker 1: pause and reflect on why they're doing let's say, their homework.
Speaker 1: In one condition, you say, well, think about why you're
Speaker 1: doing and why am I doing it? And the other condition,
Speaker 1: you might say, imagine your Batman and think about why
Speaker 1: Batman is working on this hard, difficult task. And when
Speaker 1: you have a kid think about themselves like a superhero.
Speaker 1: It turns out they perform better, they feel better, and
Speaker 1: there's even some evidence that those techniques are most useful
Speaker 1: for the kids who have the most difficulty controlling their emotions.
Speaker 1: You've also showed that this technique works in the face
Speaker 1: of the kinds of pandemic threats we're facing. Now you've
Speaker 1: done some work in the context of the Ebola crisis
Speaker 1: from a few years ago showing that this works as well. Right, so,
Speaker 1: you know, Ebola was a really interesting phenomenon. Ebola is
Speaker 1: actually quite different from coronavirus and ways we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it provided us with a really
Speaker 1: interesting opportunity to see how these linguistic shifts work outside
Speaker 1: the lab in daily life when people are dealing with
Speaker 1: a threat. What was interesting about Ebola was there were
Speaker 1: actually lots of reasons why people shouldn't be worried about
Speaker 1: the threat of an ebola outbreak in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's not an airborne disease. The medical infrastructure in the
Speaker 1: United States is much better than in Africa where there
Speaker 1: were outbreaks. And yet you still had lots of people
Speaker 1: seemingly incapable of accessing those fact base reasons why things
Speaker 1: aren't going to go south really fast, And so everyone
Speaker 1: was zoomed in on the threat. Could we zoom them
Speaker 1: out help them get a sense of the bigger perspective
Speaker 1: in ways that would alleviate their anxiety, and so, right
Speaker 1: when the threat was peaking, we did a study online
Speaker 1: with over a thousand people spread across all fifty states,
Speaker 1: and we had half of participants think about their concerns
Speaker 1: about ebol and the first person and the other half
Speaker 1: of participants were asked to do so using their own name.
Speaker 1: And what we found was that the more people use
Speaker 1: their own name to think about this problem to work
Speaker 1: through their feelings, the more they were able to think
Speaker 1: about the reasons why they shouldn't be worried, The more
Speaker 1: they generated fact based it's not airborne, the infrastructure is better,
Speaker 1: and so forth and so on, and not surprisingly, the
Speaker 1: more people thought about these reasons not to worry, the
Speaker 1: less they actually worried, and the lower they thought there
Speaker 1: was a risk of a widespread outbreak. And so I
Speaker 1: think that was a nice way of looking at how
Speaker 1: these linguistic shifts play outside the laboratory. Now, the situation
Speaker 1: with the coronavirus is actually a little different. We are
Speaker 1: not getting clear messaging about why we shouldn't be worrying
Speaker 1: about this pandemic. You tune into some channels or publications
Speaker 1: and they say there's no need to worry. Other people
Speaker 1: will say no, actually the risk is quite severe. We're
Speaker 1: talking about millions of people, and so we don't actually
Speaker 1: know what's fact and what's not. And I think that's
Speaker 1: in part what is driving so much anxiety about this situation.
Speaker 1: So in this context, I think there is still benefit
Speaker 1: that can be had from distancing. But the technique that
Speaker 1: I've been recommending to people, it's something else that we
Speaker 1: call temporal distancing, or you might think about it as
Speaker 1: mental time travel. So one of the things we know,
Speaker 1: and this is a fact, is that what we are
Speaker 1: now going through we have experienced as a species before.
Speaker 1: There have been other pandemics that have occurred the varied
Speaker 1: in their intensity, but they've happened, and importantly, we're still
Speaker 1: here capable of talking about them. So they've happened and
Speaker 1: we've gotten through it. And so what temporal distancing? If
Speaker 1: I asked you to think about how you feel not
Speaker 1: right now, but how are you going to feel two
Speaker 1: years from now, right when most forecasts suggest this will
Speaker 1: have subsided, will have vaccines, herd immunity will likely develop,
Speaker 1: and so forth. There's lots and lots of research which
Speaker 1: show that engaging in this form of mental time travel,
Speaker 1: thinking about how we're going to feel not right now,
Speaker 1: in this moment, but in six months from now, or
Speaker 1: a year from now or two years from now. What
Speaker 1: that does is it highlights the impermanence of what we
Speaker 1: are currently experiencing. And this is another strategy that we
Speaker 1: use when we're giving advice to each other. Like whenever
Speaker 1: I talk to my college students about some threat that
Speaker 1: they see right at the moment, you know this grade
Speaker 1: that's looming. They got a really horrible grade. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: in three years time, this isn't going to really matter
Speaker 1: that much. Like the coaches from the outside can give
Speaker 1: you some psychological distance by harnessing how you're going to
Speaker 1: think about things in the future. It's just we're just
Speaker 1: doing the same thing inside our own heads exactly. And
Speaker 1: you know, there are countless distancing techniques that exist. We've
Speaker 1: talked about right this linguistic shift. Now we're talking about
Speaker 1: temporal distancing. The key here is to think about which
Speaker 1: distancing tactic works best in this particular situation. There's a
Speaker 1: reason why we have these different strategies. They're all related,
Speaker 1: but they work a little differently. So this is super
Speaker 1: advice because it seems like we can use each of
Speaker 1: these strategies in the coronavirus situation, but at different times.
Speaker 1: So when I'm going to the grocery store and I'm
Speaker 1: just super anxious and I need to calm down, I
Speaker 1: can talk to myself in the third person like Laurie,
Speaker 1: like you know, you're going to get through this, You're
Speaker 1: going to make a good decision, etc. Etc. But kind
Speaker 1: of collectively, as a culture, we might be able to
Speaker 1: use this temporal distancing strategy to really think, hang on,
Speaker 1: let's pause for a second. We're going to get through this.
Speaker 1: We've gotten through this before. Three years from now, this
Speaker 1: is going to be fine, etc. When you use these
Speaker 1: strategies yourself, are you switching between them or these kind
Speaker 1: of go to strategies that you tend to use totally Ethan,
Speaker 1: get your act together, this is going to be fine.
Speaker 1: And the temporal distancing. I use those two interchangeably. You
Speaker 1: actually did something that was really interesting when you just
Speaker 1: described how you shift from using lorry to the temporal distancing.
Speaker 1: When you were describing the mental time travel stuff, you
Speaker 1: actually use the word we We're going to get through this,
Speaker 1: not I'm going to get through this. We we A
Speaker 1: is also another form of distancing, right, It's not just
Speaker 1: about me, it's about all of us together. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's another illustration right there, of how language
Speaker 1: is serving as this this conduit that's helping you distance
Speaker 1: in that moment. My prediction would be you might feel
Speaker 1: a little bit different if it was I'm going to
Speaker 1: get through this in four year scenari then we're going
Speaker 1: to get through it. I wanted to end with the
Speaker 1: question of, like, what's Ethan doing right now? I mean,
Speaker 1: have you watched yourself use these rategies in the stressful situation? Laurie.
Speaker 1: Of course, I've watched myself using strategies. This is all
Speaker 1: I do. I'm feeling anxious too, and I think that's appropriate.
Speaker 1: I know I'm in it with everyone else. We human beings, people,
Speaker 1: all of us are incredibly resilient, and the human mind
Speaker 1: has amazing, this amazing facility for thinking flexibly about the
Speaker 1: challenges that we face. And there's some evidence actually that
Speaker 1: these kinds of emotion regulation tools are even more effective
Speaker 1: when you're under threat, because there's so much more negative
Speaker 1: emotion to help rain in under those circumstances. So I
Speaker 1: think they can help take the edge off, and I
Speaker 1: think that's what we want them to do. Taking the
Speaker 1: edge off just a little bit can often be the difference,
Speaker 1: I think between getting your work done and not getting
Speaker 1: it done, being happy and cheery around your family and
Speaker 1: not and so so I encourage people to try them.
Speaker 1: So in some sense, these are strategies that can get
Speaker 1: us back to kind of normal functioning in a really
Speaker 1: abnormal time. Yeah. I think that's a great way of
Speaker 1: putting it. That's the hope. I, for one, plan to
Speaker 1: take Ethan's ideas to heart, or should I say, Laurie's
Speaker 1: going to start taking Ethan's ideas to heart. Laura's going
Speaker 1: to think carefully about what she can do in this crisis,
Speaker 1: and Laurie's going to realize that she's been through things
Speaker 1: like this before and she's come through them okay, And
Speaker 1: so I hope you'll join me, Laurie for the next
Speaker 1: special episode of The Happiness Lab. The Happiness Lab is
Speaker 1: made by me, doctor Laurie Santos. It's produced and co
Speaker 1: written by Ryan Delley. Our original music is by Zachary
Speaker 1: Silver where a Pushkin Podcast. So special thanks go to
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Neil Aabelle, Heather Faine, Carli mcgliori, Julia Barton
Speaker 1: and the rest of the team.